Bitcoin's problem
There are currently over 200,000+ unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin network and this is steadily increasing. You can watch it realtime on blockchain.info.
It's a huge problem for Bitcoin and without a scaling solution in sight the only way to be sure to actually send money at this point is to lure the Bitcoin miners with a high transaction fee.
When I used Bitcoin for the first time I was amazed for 2 reasons:
- Bitcoin was fast. My transactions were being confirmed within 10 minutes.
- It was nearly free to use. Very low transaction fees.
At this point, Bitcoin is as good as unusable. If you don't want to pay a high fee it could take hours or even days before Bitcoin miners will confirm your transaction. This way you will never be able to buy a cup of coffee using Bitcoin. The transactions costs would be higher than your coffee itself.
Blocks are full!
Bitcoin has a 10 minute blocktime and a blocksize of 1 Megabyte, which means the network can store only 1 MB of transaction data per 10 minutes. As you can see in the chart below, the number of Bitcoin transactions is growing rapidly. With so many transactions, 1 MB is simply not enough.
Source: blockchain.info
Transactions per second
The Bitcoin network is currently processing between 3 and 4 transactions per second. It's growing fast, but it's still nothing if you compare this with credit card issuer VISA for example. VISA handles on average around 2,000 transactions per second and is capable of handling up to 30,000 simultaneous transactions. (source: Wikipedia)
The Steem Blockchain
Steem is capable of handling 1000's of transactions per second. You can read more about the performance and scalability of Steem on Steem.io.
This means Steem would easily process all 200,000+ unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions within a minute!
And that's not all. It does it even without any fees. This is why Steem is, besides a social platform, a much better cryptocurrency for buying a cup of coffee. And that's exactly what @mallorcaman did today. Did you know there are 3 bars/restaurants on the sunny Spanish island Mallorca where Steem is adopted as a payment option? Read about it here.